A Hawaiian marine scientist says evidence shows there is no doubt Hawaii's waters are being overfished but he's hopeful traditional Hawaiian sustainability practices may help.
Dr Alan Friedlander says 25,000 marine surveys conducted over the last decade indicate significant depletion of fish stocks around the main Hawaiian Islands.
He says recent recognition of the problem by the State Legislature is a huge leap forward and there has been a fundamental shift with the public now realising more has to be done to sustain the marine environment.
Jenny Meyer asked him what action is planned as a result of the research.
A longliner fishing vessel.
Photo: 123RF
Transcript
ALAN FRIEDLANDER: So what we would like to see out of it is kind of a multi-pronged approach now. It's being predicated on education for the most part. We're trying to use traditional Hawaiian values about proper codes of conduct, proper fishing practices that were used in the past to manage the resources. Encourage community based management areas, which there's been a renaissance of in Hawaii as of late where Native Hawaiian communities for the most part have tried to re-establish control over their local areas. Law enforcement, which is a huge problem. Every fisherman complains about the lack of enforcement. And then finally a network of marine protected areas, which we feel will be the most effective way to help manage resources into the future. This will not only conserve biodiversity within the protected areas but also enhance fisheries by having more and larger fish inside the protected areas and spilling over and upping the population in over fished areas.
JENNY MEYER: And how much fight back do you expect from commercial fishermen because I guess that seems to be this kind of perennial tension between people who say 'we need to eat' and others who say 'well if you're too greedy you're going to go without for your grandchildren'?
AF: Right, that's exactly it. So there's constituents on all sides. In the near shore waters, surprisingly or maybe not surprisingly the large proportion of the catch is non-commercial. So the recreational, subsistence, non-reported commercial catch, accounts for nearly ten times greater catch than the commercial catch. So it's really everybody involved. So we do get a lot of push back from people saying you know 'you're preventing me from helping me feed my family' and so forth. But we're trying to get people to take the long view on this. That yes this may help you at this particular point in time but the next generation of people is going to be far worse off if we don't do something about it now. We're at a kind of a tipping point in Hawaii where there's really populated areas around Ohahu where Honolulu is and around the island of Maui have shown severe degradation. But we see places elsewhere around the State where there is not a lot of people that are still very healthy. So they are probably helping to sustain the populations. But between climate change and all the local stressors things are on the downhill slide and we hope that people will take a longer view. And so our recent study and talking to people and getting out and trying to engage people and trying to re-establish the knowledge that existed in Hawaii before European contact are critical elements of getting people to take the long view about sustainability of the ecosystem.
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